Largo
by iloveyousong
Summary: You're hiding one of them, he accused, even though it was two, not just one. The reasons that Claude, the infamous invisible man, truly vanished into thin air. Please read and review.
1. Claude

Largo

by leaffymomo

Note: "You're hiding one of them." Not just one, but two. The reason that Claude was removed from Primatech. How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look? I don't own Heroes. Please, please read and use the lovely purple box below, even if you don't like it.

* * *

_How long shall they kill our prophets_

_While we stand aside and look?  
Some say it's just a part of it,_

_We've got to fulfill the book._

_Won't you help to sing_

_These songs of freedom?_

_'Cause they all I ever had..._

-Bob Marley, "Redemption Song"

**lar-go**: (lär'gō) _n_. a musical composition or passage that is to be performed in a slow, dignified manner

Chapter One: Claude

Claude--just Claude--tips his head against the car window lazily, opening one eye to observe the cloudy world of the outside. They are somewhere in Maine---the sky was the bleak color of dull cigarette ashes, perfect for tufts of snow to come falling out of them. He wants a cigarette. _God_, he wants a cigarette. But Claude smokes a pipe, and only sometimes at that. The physician at Primatech has told him probably fifty times that he needs to stop, and since Claude--just Claude--would like to keep his job, he's gradually shifting from one stage to the next.

He's rather antsy. He fiddles his fingers, taps his foot. He flicks the knob that rolls down the window. He drums his nails on the armrest. Bennet, next to him, glances at him the way fathers sometimes glance at their children when they want them to stop being such an annoyance. Claude glances back and puts his hands in his lap. Bennet chuckles.

"Christ," he says, his eyes still on the road, "You're like a little kid, Claude."

Claude gives him an almost sulky look. "Where's the case profile?"

"In the back seat. Read it to me, wouldja?"

Claude unbuckles his seatbelt and twists around through the gap between the seats to pick up a thick manila folder. He resumes his spot in his seat, crossing one leg over the other and flipping open the file. His blue-gray eyes scan the page. Bennet clears his throat.

"Oh--sorry," the invisible man says in his light English accent, "First one is a man--Richard Ackerley, forty-five years old, a..." He furrows his brow at the page, "God, Breckster's got horrible handwriting, can't he use a bloody goddamn typewriter for Jesus' sake?"

Bennet raises an eyebrow. "You need a cigarette," he informs Claude, who snorts.

"Mimic. He's a mimic. He's been forging papers for illegal immigrants...sort of weird...on the Canadian border," remarks the Brit, clucking his tongue.

"What kind of immigrants, though?" asks Bennet and Claude nods in understanding.

"Yeah. Is it...?" The question is wordless, hanging open in the air. "No. Just arrest. Bring him in."

"There's two, though," reminds Bennet, and Claude flips to the next person. "Woman, looks like his wife. Forty-one years old, name's Lisabeth Jones Ackerley..." He trails off.

Bennet waits expectantly. He coughs again, to remind Claude that he's not the only one in the car who needs to know who they're supposed to be tracking. "She's a..." he says, gesturing, waiting for Claude to complete the statement.

"She's telekinetic."

"Shit," says Bennet, sighing and looking back out on the road. "You get her, then. If she goes beserk, the only thing that'll stop her is---"

"Something she can't see, I know," Claude cuts him off irritably. "I was there at training too. This is why I'm here." He slaps closed the folder, and then opens it again in a huff.

"Take the exit after this one," he says, "We've got to get to...1589 Prewett Street. It's in...Brussels?" He squints at the report. "Yeah. Brussels, Maine."

Richard and Lisabeth Ackerley live in a poorer part of Brussels, Maine, but it's not bad. A lower middle class suburb, not quite poverty, not quite comfort. Their house is the last on the end of a quiet, motionless lane called Prewett Street. It's the middle of the day--1:00, lunch breaks are over and the streets are devoid of life. Except they'll be there. They always are. Even though it's a Saturday, no children are out in the yards. It's too cold, deduced Claude. He doesn't find it too bad.

That's the description for this place: not too bad. You might as well take it, something better might not come along.

They pull up in the driveway. Bennet gets out, locks the car door and so does Claude. He doesn't go invisible yet; they've deduced over countless confrontations that the surprise of him being invisible is better. It creates panic, and sometimes they need that desperately.

Bennet rings the doorbell, Claude at his side. A middle aged woman answers---she's slightly heavy-set, but she has a sweet face and sweet eyes. A surge of guilt plunges through Claude but he stuffs it down expertly. He always feels a twinge or two...these are people like him, after all.

But it is eat or be eaten. Kill or be killed. And Claude rather likes his head.

However, back to the issue at hand.

Telekinetics always seem to be a little psychic. "Richard," she calls over her shoulder, in a tone that Claude cannot identify, "It's for you." She quickly backs up, disappears up the stairs. A tall, gangly man appears, and Bennet and Claude shove their way inside the house, closing the door behind them.

"Mr. Ackerley," says Bennet professionally, pleasantly. "You are under arrest for using supernatural powers in ways that have been deemed illegal by the nation and our government. You will brought into custody, along with your wife."

Claude doesn't his take his eyes off the mimic. Richard glances back and forth, apprehension evident in his face. "I don't know what you're talking about," he says, and Claude could have mimed his response along with him, that's how typical it is.

Bennet does not waste time. He is a precariously efficient man, and one too many close calls with these sorts has left him with little, little patience. He draws his gun and points it...rather pointedly at Richard. "Do not make this more difficult for yourself, Mr. Ackerley," he says cleanly, "Put your hands up and let my partner cuff you, and then we'll get your wife."

"Richard? What---oh my God," the voice from the stares, panicked and feminine. "Don't...don't touch him!" And then suddenly Bennet is unable to move. His entire body is trembling. He cannot even turn his eyeballs to give Claude the warning glance, but Claude already knows.

"Let him go," warns Claude in his accented voice, so serious, that flighty quirkiness gone and all that is there is the cold mask of a businessman, "Let him go. That's your warning. Stop it, stop it _now_."

"No!" she yells, "You're not...we didn't do anything! We didn't do anything!"

And with that, Claude becomes invisible. She gasps, for a moment her guard is dropped and Bennet is released. He slams Mr. Ackerley across the face with his gun instinctively, and then there is the burn of psychic power all around him. Ackerley is still the ground. There is not even the slightest movement of his chest.

"I...told you...not to touch him..." Mrs. Ackerley is shaking, glowing, and Bennet is choking to death. Bennet's eyes roll back into his head. Claude sprints towards the woman without being seen. He is able to touch her---he pounds on her, pulls, screams, the woman is not to be deterred in her last throes of anger, of power.

Bennet lets out a strangled cry, his hands writhing. Claude doesn't think. His hand goes to his belt, he pulls on the cold metal there and then---

The gunshot.

Mrs. Ackerley falls to the floor. Bennet doubles over and breathes. Claude runs over to him. "You alright, friend?" he asks, helping him up. Bennet nods wordlessly. "You're covered in blood," Bennet tells Claude breathily. Claude nods.

"I'll go...upstairs. Wash it off. I'll see if I can find some papers. Go out in the car, okay? We're done here." Bennet limps out the front door.

Claude jogs up the stairs over the woman, heading into a small upstairs bathroom. The tile is plain, the counter is plain and the shower curtain is a dull mint shade with white polka dots. He shakes his head, leaning over the small white porcelain sink, trying to calm himself. He breathes, slowing the shaking of his heart.

A sound. Like a squeak, a pained squeak. Claude whirls around. The squeak comes again, and then a...a hushing noise. His eyes widen; without thinking he yanks back the light green shower curtain.

In the bathtub, huddled together, are the two people who were not in the file.


	2. No Noise

Note: Thank you for your spectacular reviews! They definitely make my day, so keep 'em coming. :)

* * *

_Oh, I wish I had a river_

_I could skate away on._

_I wish I had a river so long_

_I would teach my feet to fly..._

-Joni Mitchell, "River"

Chapter Two: No Noise

Claude's eyes are opened wide, forgetting completely that he's dripping bits of blood and water all over the plain tile floor, the furry bath rug. He sort of stands there, amazed, dripping, bewildered, staring.

They're not even people. They're bloody _children_.

And he realizes, with more of a sick, guilty tug than usual, that he just shot their mum in the back of the head.

* * *

_She has glasses, and she used to hate them, but now she doesn't care. She peers over the rims of them, staring over wire determinedly at a_ Where's Waldo?_ fold out book. She clucks her tongue, a little bored. She shuts the book, puts it away, and takes out Animalia._

_The colors swish and swoop over pages, holding the shapes of lions and frogs and flamingos, and everything she's ever loved, loved to look at or feel. She has a secret in this book, a secret she won't tell anyone, not even herself. It makes her smile when she thinks of it. She has this one droplet, this little star that's hers and no one else's. She can't describe how it feels._

_This is Alice, and she is nine and a half, thank you very much._

* * *

Claude swallows. He turns around quickly and resumes washing the blood and the scum off his hands and arms. He splashes indulgent amounts of cold water onto his face, blinking rapidly. He's pretty sure this is just the result of too much stress, too many hours put in, not enough sleep, not enough light in his house. The culimation of little puzzle pieces of guilt, all coming together in the form of some kind of judgemental manifestation. It's all in his mind.

He turns back around, and sighs.

It isn't.

* * *

_She's not even through the first semester of her senior year, but she is already twitching, aching to get out of Brussels. It's not as though she's the only one with this feeling, not at all, but primarily it is the reason that she is made to stay home on Saturday. _

The only class she's got an A in is her Computer Science class, though she's got a B+ in math. She's the only girl in comp-sci, but she doesn't mind. It's easy. It's what she'll study at Augusta Technical College, and, well...she's not excited, not really, but it's far away from home and she'll meet a boy and it'll be nice.

Nice.

That's what you get when you grow up in a neighborhood that's okay, go to a school that's average, live in a town that's not too bad. Better take it. Something more lustrous may not ever come along.

She's up in her room at two-thirty that afternoon, trying to digest Of Mice and Men_. Laying down on her plaid comforter, she holds up the book an inch away from her face, squinting at the words. Outside the air is cold, blustery, the sky is so heavily laden with clouds that it groans. _

This is Silvia, and she is seventeen.

* * *

Two girls, curled up together with fear in their eyes, looking at him as though he's a monster. The blood might be off his hands and face, but it's still littered in spatters all over his coat, his shirt. They stare. There is a younger one, a little one who's maybe ten, staring at him in such opaque horror through her wire-rimmed spectacled eyes that he wants to look away. An older girl is holding her, a hand clamped firmly over what must be her little sister's mouth. She regards him steadily, shaking, but knowing. There is a disgusting scent of knowledge.

The little one makes that squeaking noise again. The older girl removes her hand from her mouth, whispering a word or two quickly into her ear. The girl gives a very small nod.

Claude leans back against the counter. He regards them for a moment.

"Stay here," he commands, and then leaves the room.

* * *

_Their mother tromps up the stairs, practically galloping. Alice's room is next to Silvia's. She wrenches open her older daughter's door._

_"Silvia," she hisses, not out of anger but fear, "Get up. Get up." Silvia stares at her mother and gets up off the bed, leaving _Of Mice and Men _behind on the blue plaid comforter. "Be quiet. Don't make any noise." She leads her older daughter out into the hall way. _

Silvia stands there a moment, and soon her mother brings Alice out of her room. She places her daughters' hands together.

"Silvia." There is a tone of urgency in her mother's voice that she's never heard before. "Take Alice into the bathroom and hide. Don't make any noise. No noise. Don't come out until I come get you, or Dad comes and gets you." Her mother is pleading now, pushing them towards the bathroom.

Silvia doesn't even get to ask What the hell is going on? _or _What's happening? _or even_...why?_ before the door is shut in her face. There isn't a lock on the bathroom door. _

_They have a very small house. It's not hard to hear something from any bit of it. There's a tussle going on downstairs. Alice stands, holding onto the counter. Silvia kneels by the door, pressing her ear to it. She can hear two men, voices unfamiliar, and then her father's...panicked. She furrows her brow. _

"Silvie, what's going---" asks Alice, looking a bit panicked herself. Silvia interrupts her with a shhhh, holding up her hand. She can't tell anything what's being said. But the voices are growing louder. Now Mom's voice was in the fray, yelling, louder, and then some man was screaming and then---

_A shot. _

Silvia falls back on her backside and hands, staring at the door. Alice gasps. Without thinking, Silvia picks up her sister and jumps into the bathtub, drawing the mint green curtain across the white porcelain, hiding them from view. She sits down, pulling Alice into her lap. She squeaks, and Silvia clamps her hand over Alice's mouth, staring at the green. Green. Green.

_Footsteps travel up the stairs. The front door opens and closes. _

It's Dad_, thinks Silvia, breathing. _It's Dad. He made them leave and now he's coming upstairs to tell us it's okay. It's okay. And then we'll go downstairs and have the chicken that Mom made this morning for dinner. We're fine. Just a mishap. Just a mishap.

_The bathroom door opens. _

_The heavy sound of boots on tile. Their father never wore shoes in the house. Silvia's eyes widen. Water runs. The sound of human skin and hydrogen dioxide. Silvia thinks that if they're quiet enough, he won't pull back the curtain. She doesn't breathe. She holds her hand over Alice's mouth tighter, can feel the breathe from her nose on her fingers. _

The person in front of the curtain knocks something over. Alice squeaks.

In flurry of motion, the green shower curtiain is yanked aside. There stands a tall man, covered in blood, who is not their father.

_Silvia knows instantly that they are about to die._

* * *

Claude is in the master bedroom, rifling through a desk full of papers in the corner. He shoves them into an old briefcase he found under a chair. He piles the papers in, but with every file he thinks: _There are two orphans in the bathroom. _It hurts. It hurts to think about.

When Claude kills, he never sees the aftermath. Bennet and him don't kill too often, but when they do, it's always quick. It's always brief, take the evidence, leave. They never see the husband come home to find his wife dead on the sofa, or the dog whimpering sadly, waiting to be fed from his now-deceased, mutant master. They never see that. And that's why it's easy.

After five full minutes of looking into the eyes of two girls who have nowhere to go, Claude is at a loss. He doesn't know what to do. What can he do, anyway? Leave them money? He's already leaving them with their lives. If it had been Bennet instead of him...he doesn't know. Bennet is a good man. But when pushed, is not so compliant.

Claude doesn't think anymore. He just...does.

He grabs the handle of the briefcase and strides back to the bathroom.

"Get up. Hurry. We don't have much time." He speaks quickly and firmly. The older girl stands shakily. When he offers her his hand as she gets out of the tub, she flinches and does not accept, quickly pulling out her sister next to her.

"This is going to feel odd. You cannot make a noise. You cannot make a single noise. If you do, you...will not be safe," says Claude tersely, euphemizing death. The two sisters are holding hands. He reaches over and grabs the older girl's forearm. "Do not let go of her," he commands, and then all three of them disappear. The little one gasps, but then makes no more noise.

He practically drags them out as fast as he can. He thanks God that he and Bennet stowed the bodies away in the kitchen. But there's still blood on the floor in the foyer. They stride outside, Claude pulling and tugging.

Bennet is asleep in the front seat. Claude knows that he's lucky. He opens the trunk, tosses the briefcase in and then helps the two girls inside. He releases them, and they fade back into view. So does he.

"No noise," he whispers, and he is wracked with nervousness. "No noise, or we'll be caught. No noise."

And he shuts the trunk.

He goes up to the passenger's seat, opens the door and sits inside. "You feeling all right, Bennet?" he asks.


End file.
